Chola
I just don’t want to live somewhere
where, in fact, I am not …
Sri Chola
Initiation
Chola (Oleg Cherne) is a name that was given to me through initiation by a great yogi named Srila Vamsidas Babaji Maharaj (or Vamsi Das Babaji for short). The complete version of the initiation name was Sri Chola. Initially, Vamsidas Babaji called me simply Sri, but after a few days, he began to address me as Sri Chola, and then just Chola.
After a nine-month retreat, the immortal hermit appeared and pointed out aspects that have convinced me that I was either himself or a part of him. His appearance I perceive as a transmission of knowledge when our consciousnesses merged in search of light. We immersed together into the space of the eleventh integral field — the field where, in fact, light lives.
Nature of reality
The astonishing thing about biography is that you need to be able to create it! This fact has forced me to search for my identity throughout my conscious life. Life is so unpredictable and mysterious that if we do not look at it through the lens of integral fields (that is, different levels of tonality), we fall into the routine of temporal physics, living the «born-died» formula. What we can see around and what we are willing to explore deeper determines our reality.
It is essential to focus on the highest purposes. It means that we concentrate on the spirit to manifest our irrational nature and to understand the essence of the mind. I had figured out my biography and its symbolic junctions a long time ago. Now space revealed my further initiation, connected with the nature of perfection, within the line of transmission of knowledge related to The Perfect One project.
Search for the knowledge
Srila Vamsidas Babaji Maharaj
I studied Khmer tradition in search of knowledge about illumination and the nature of light, which I was collecting at the same time through alchemical research. I discovered that system of Khmer culture has absorbed, in fact, all Asian spiritual traditions. My whole practical path and many of the teachers and masters I’ve met, as well as women who were practicing, were leading me to this space of knowledge.
I clearly remember the first experience of interaction with the world of spiritual women in the form of one sannyasi, whom I visited out of curiosity. She tested me on the subject of illumination, running her fingers along some lines of my body. It was an unusual experience of meeting something incomprehensible to me, but I remembered it for the rest of my life. It was 40 years ago.
Over time, I had to dive deeper into the topic of female development. And the reason for this was my constant research related to alchemy and tantra. Both traditions carried in themselves the matrix of feminine nature aspect. In other words, principles of collection, accumulation, and transformation, inherent to a woman’s nature. And if alchemy led me into comprehension of the Taoist tradition, then tantra, surprisingly as it may sound, into African, Polynesian cultures, and only then Tibetan, Hindu, and, finally, into the Khmer spiritual tradition.
One way or another, by communicating with women, you are already interacting with tantra. Every woman is an embodiment of tantric principles. So, getting more experienced of communicating with women, I began to see it as a constant attunement towards harmony, to the source of luminosity. So I immersed myself in the sea of tantra.
It just happened that in the course of my path, for a very long time, I was surrounded by many special women: magicians, witches, hermits, oracles, practitioners. All of them helped me to elaborate my biography to some extent with details or, more correctly, flowers on the path.
Sacred dance
However, there is an essential detail that the meeting with Vamsidas Babaji took place right now. We’ve met 30 years ago for the first time. Then he was steadily perceived by me, but either I couldn’t interact with him, or other conditions, which surrounded me, did not allow me to connect with him deeper. What united us now is the way of perception of the dance – as a tool for honoring and worshipping space. My interest in learning dance as the experience of fulfillment through action creates a common ground between us.
For a long time, dance was a physical form for me since as I perceived it as part of body training for martial arts. But over time, it became like an act of worshipping and attunement to the highest nature of metaphysics. It was an allegory of The Churning of the Ocean of Milk that led me to the studying apsaras and their heavenly dance.
The fact is that a man who has attained an understanding of the nature of spirit can understand the perfect dance. The perfect dance is when the movements are repeated with constant effort because it becomes real kirtan. Specific positions of the body, precise movements, and concentration create the possibility of revealing the light through this sacred action.
Dance practices that I performed at first and which then began to study in different traditions, merged into a single effort to overcome the physical and turned into dance as the art of overcoming the material world.
One way or another, the necessity for understanding the sacred meaning of dance grew into a whole system of understanding the nature of light, to which women pushed me, and, as I see it now, also Srila Vamsidas Babaji. I saw that dance is a perfect way of perceiving, reading space, and interacting with it. It represented ritual, rhythm, music, a sacred scheme for me. And, most importantly, it was based on harmony. Comprehension of the woman’s nature created the basis of the True body or the Tantric body and led me to the discovery of the Khmer tradition and apsaras.
The essence of the highest harmony
Vamsidas Babaji has the consciousness of the ninth integral field which makes him an immortal of a certain level. And the connection with him, on the one hand, is obvious to me since I have been studying the nature of immortality for more than 40 years. And on the other hand, it imposes many restrictions related to transcendental concepts. But since this union is filled with prema (a source of light), the connection with Vamsidas Babaji is meaningful for me.
He is so clearly showed certain milestones in my life that this served as the basis to describe this biography precisely from the perspective of the line of knowledge of The Perfect One. I am especially impressed by his explanation of being in an eternal state of love, which he has associated with Radha, and for me, perhaps, is addressed to a woman in general as a living source of light.
My desire to educate and learn from women is too profound to deny. I’ve been talking for a long time about a woman as a symbol of harmony. It looks like that I am experiencing something similar to eternal love for Lakshmi as the highest representative of the nature of female harmony. It was my inner passion and mysterious unity that needed to be nurtured for many years to comprehend.
The nature of irrational knowledge
I constantly advocated mental adequacy in the process of cognition of spiritual teachings. And now I can add that to reach a materialized form of interaction with higher frequencies fields you need to operate with the irrational knowledge. That is the essence of The Perfect One project or the path of light. And here we are similar to Vamsidas Babaji as he was a living example of that knowledge.
An important question for us: with what or with whom is our consciousness in touch — with light or with darkness? If with light, then do we have enough experience of interaction with it? And whether we are ready to match this attunement?
People are living mainly in parallel connections, but it is necessary to build sequential ones. Until we do not understand the integrality of the world, we cannot answer the question, which one do we belong to?
As the saying goes, if the gods want to eat, then let them cook for themselves!
In other words, to live the higher meaning you need to be able to work on it.
Practice is a form of loving service, and its offering is our light. However, our spirit should also be considered light. But before talking about spirit, we still need to turn to ourselves.
By the way, the interweaving of theme about theft, which is present in the life stories of Vimsidas Babaji, and in the story of one of the practitioners, Terra (her name has been changed), described in the book «The Perfect One», is interesting:
Where does it come from ¬¬ the wish to steal something? From insufficiency? Or maybe because you like doing it? Is this a game with time? To steal something from time … It needs us to feel that we have so little! How much we have stolen from time, so much we have gained in total! And this accumulation already determined everything for us. We were taught to take, but we do not know how to use it. It’s already hard to hold, and all that remains is to adjust. Who taught us to steal, teach us how to use it! To define problems is to adapt again! What is the problem? The fact that time does not stop!
Whatever we take from time, it ceases to be. The question here is memory fixation or the presence of something from the past. My childhood was not stolen — my light was stolen. Childhood became a sign of something that no longer exists. Water pours on my face, and there is a bloody trail in it, and it is no longer from childhood, and for this, no one bears the answer.
First, we waste time, and then space where light lives!
Memories of my fall from the roof came back to me … Nevertheless, I am not only alive but happy in my exile from this temporary space. I think that it is only our consciousness is what devoted to us, which represents our true bhava.
